How To Join The Office 365 Developer Program

Hello folks, I am writing this article with my personal experience in creating a free developer subscription for Office 365 for one year.

Here are the steps to be followed.

1. Create a Microsoft Account (Outlook, live, Skype, etc...) if you don’t have one. I have created a Microsoft account using Outlook.
2. Login to this site using the Outlook account credentials.
   
3. Click on Join Now and fill out the required fields. Then, click "NEXT".
   
4. Select the areas of your interest and click "JOIN".
   
   
5. After a few minutes, you’ll get the below welcome screen which asks you to set up a new Office 365 developer subscription.
   
6. Click "SET UP SUBSCRIPTION" to proceed.
   
7. Fill up the required fields and click on "Set up".
   
   
8. On successful process completion, you’ll see your subscription information, click on "office.com" and sign in using your newly created subscription name and password.
   
9. Once you sign in for the first time, you’ll be landing in the Office365 Homepage, click on the "Admin Link" to get started.
   
10. You’ll get the welcome screen which will take you on a small tour about the navigation.
    
11. Once you get familiar with the navigational elements, here comes the most important step for Office 365 Enterprise E3 Developer setup. On the Admin Center home page, you’ll be able to find the setup screen to proceed forward. Click on "Go to setup" to proceed. If you are not able to find the below screen. Search in the search bar on top of the page.
    
12. Once you click on Go to Setup, you’ll be landing in a page to choose the domain where you get the option to choose the domain of your choice which you already own else you continue using the one which you just created here for the O365 subscription. I choose option 2 and click "Next".
    
13. Here comes the license part. You have 25 of 25 license(s) available for this subscription to make use of. It’s up to you how you make use of it. I leave it blank and clicking "NEXT".
    
14. Now assign the license for the user which I am going to use for the development activity which means you have 24 of 25 license(s) available. Click on next.
    
15. We will get the option of sharing the credentials of the user by giving their alternate Email ID.
    
    
16. Click on "Next". You get the option to install the Office apps to your PC’s up to 5 devices. It’s up to you if you install it or not. Click on "Next" to proceed.
    
    
17. That’s all. We are done with setting up the subscription. Set your password to never expire as an important recommendation. Click on "View Recommendation" and save and close.
    
    
    
18. Finally, we can make use of the subscription to get started with the development activity for Office and SharePoint Online solutions like Powerapps, OneDrive, etc.
    
19. Play around with the "Admin Site" to get familiar with the navigation and get things done.
20. Say, for example, you wanted to create a Communication site in SharePoint online, click on SharePoint from the O365 root menu.
    
21. You’ll get landed in the SharePoint Online home page for creating sites to work with.
    
22. Click on Create site > Communication site.
    
23. Give a name for the site and click "Finish".
    
24. Your first communication site gets created in a matter of seconds.
    

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Happy SharePointing!